Thoughts on Life, Love, Politics, Hypocrisy and Coming Out in Mid-Life

Friday, February 26, 2016

The GOP: Twilight of the Apparatchiks

0In an almost equally snarky column in the New York Times, Paul Krugman looks at the delusional nature of the so-called GOP establishment that cannot grasp that it has unleashed a Frankenstein monster that the party base will not reject as directed from on high. Trump is running his campaign to pander to precisely the racism and misogyny that the party elites have cultivated for years going all the way back to Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" to win the South after desegregation. In the process, the establishment types came to live in a bubble where facts and the lives of average Americans do not matter. Rather, it's all about playing by the rules and swearing allegiance to the party orthodoxy no matter how out of touch with reality it may be. Donald trump's rise is a signal that the bubble is perhaps about to burst and the neat little game plan of the establishment may be about to go down the toilet. Here are column highlights:

Lack of self-awareness can be fatal. The haplessness of the Republican establishment in the face of Trumpism is a case in point.

As
many have noted, it’s remarkable how shocked — shocked! — that
establishment has been at the success of Donald Trump’s racist,
xenophobic campaign. Who knew that this kind of thing would appeal to
the party’s base? Isn’t the G.O.P. the party of Ronald Reagan, who sold
conservatism with high-minded philosophical messages, like talking about
a “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy T-bone steaks?

Seriously, Republican political strategy has been exploiting racial antagonism, getting working-class whites to despise government
because it dares to help Those People, for almost half a century. So
it’s amazing to see the party’s elite utterly astonished by the success
of a candidate who is just saying outright what they have consistently
tried to convey with dog whistles.

What
I find even more amazing, however, are the Republican establishment’s
delusions about what its own voters are for. You see, all indications
are that the party elite imagines that base voters share its own faith
in conservative principles, when that not only isn’t true, it never has
been.

Here’s
an example: Last summer, back when Mr. Trump was just beginning his
rise, he promised not to cut Social Security, and insiders like William Kristol gleefully declared
that he was “willing to lose the primary to win the general.” In
reality, however, Republican voters don’t at all share the elite’s
enthusiasm for entitlement cuts . . .

Yet the Republican establishment still seems unable to understand that
hardly any of its own voters, let alone the voters it would need to win
in the general election, are committed to free-market, small-government
ideology.

Oh,
and the G.O.P. establishment was also sure that Mr. Trump would pay a
heavy price for asserting that we were misled into Iraq — evidently
unaware just how widespread that (correct) belief is among Americans of
all political persuasions.

So
what’s the source of this obliviousness? The answer, I’d suggest, is
that in recent years — and, in fact, for the past couple of decades —
becoming a conservative activist has actually been a low-risk,
comfortable career choice. Most Republican officeholders hold safe
seats, which they can count on keeping if they are sufficiently
orthodox. Moreover, if they should stumble, they can fall back on
“wingnut welfare,” the array of positions at right-wing media
organizations, think tanks and so on that are always there for loyal
spear carriers.

And loyalty is almost the only thing that matters. Does an economist at a right-wing think tank have a remarkable record of embarrassing mistakes? Does a pundit have an almost surreal history of bad calls? No matter, as long as they hew to the orthodox line.

But
back to the hermetic world of the Republican elite: This world has, as I
said, existed for decades. The result is an establishment comprising
apparatchiks, men (mainly) who have spent their entire professional
lives in an environment where repeating approved orthodoxy guarantees an
easy life,while any deviation from that orthodoxy means
excommunication. They know that people outside their party disagree, but
that doesn’t matter much for their careers.

Now,
however, they face the reality that most voters inside their party
don’t agree with the orthodoxy, either. And all signs are that they
still can’t wrap their minds around that fact. . . . Even now, when it’s almost too late to stop the Trump Express, they
still imagine that “But he’s not a true conservative!” is an effective
attack.

Things would be very different, obviously, if Mr. Trump were in fact to
lock in the Republican nomination (which could happen in a few weeks).
Would his raw appeal to white Americans’ baser instincts continue to
work? I don’t think so. But given the ineffectuality of his party’s
elite, my guess is that we will get a chance to find out.

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Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
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